If you’re stuck for things to do on Christmas Eve, why not catch up on any Non League Journey interviews you may have missed.
Over the past nine months we have spoken to over 70 current and former Non League personalities who have chartered their footballing careers shared memorable many funny stories.
Danny Buttle, Chib Chilaka, Simon Clifford, Darren Hepworth, Shane Kelsey, Antony Leech, John Reed and Joe Thornton are just a few of the people who gave interviews to Non League Yorkshire.
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Here’s a flavour of some of the Non League Journey interviews:
Joe Thornton on his dad Tony ‘No Ticket’
“Some people are addicted to drink and drugs. My father Tony is addicted to getting into Non League grounds for nothing. We’ve tried rehab, but nothing has cured him!
“I don’t know half of the time how he does it, but he’ll get into a ground for nothing by any means. When he’s on a coach he’ll run off the bus and pick a kit bag up and walk in. My dad says ‘it keeps me young’. He always has a grin on his face and he says ‘if I have to pay, I’ll pay’.
“When I was 17 at Ossett he’d do it at places like Mossley and Newcastle Blue Star. Stewards would say ‘are you the manager mate’? He’d go ‘yeah I’m the manager’. Eric used to grin and say ‘let him in’. Maybe that’s why Eric used to put me on the bench a lot.
“It is at Shaw Lane where he really took his addiction to some extreme heights to get into games and when the lads started knowing what he gets up to. We were warming-up once somewhere and there was me, Stevie Istead, Stef Holt, Ian Deakin, Matt Thornhill and Lee Morris doing some passing. I said ‘look lads let’s have a look round this ground to see where my father is getting in’. Nobody knew what I was on about, but I remember Moz looking round and saying ‘look, he’s there big T’. He was scaling the fence in the corner of the ground. We burst out laughing and shouted ‘Big T’. He walked past us with his chest out right proud and he just winked at us like nothing was up. He certainly made a name for himself.
“Before a game, he’d walk round the ground and I’d say ‘where are you going’ and he’d say ‘just going to find the best spot son’. I always said ‘dad, it is only a fiver in’. But he’d say ‘I’ll put a fiver behind the bar for them or buy a badge, not a problem, but I want to get in for nowt, I like getting in for nowt’. Even at Worsbrough last season with Moz, we’d be stood on the sidelines and he’d say ‘how’s big T getting in today’? I’d say ‘wherever that fence is’.
“When I was a player at Handsworth we were at Bottesford and one of the lads said ‘what’s tha father doing’? He thought I was joking when I said ‘getting in for nowt’. He’d just seen him take his shirt off and jump over the fence. Big T just loves getting in for nowt!
“He’s not got an issue with any club because he does it at every ground. You can’t write it can you! He’s even roped my brother (Matthew) into it. He’s scales the odd fence now and then.
“Maybe chairmen will be looking out for him. I’ll provide a photo of Big T on request for any worried chairmen out there! My only other bit of advice is to build some bigger walls or erect some larger fences so he’d need to bring a massive ladder!”
Shane Kelsey causes the Royal Rumble at Ossett Albion
“There were some funny moments at Ossett. There was the Salford incident, that was funny. We beat them 5-0 and I scored two or three. It was when Ash Berry was the manager and I got hacked down in the first half by the centre-back and we got a penalty. People were going barmy and this kid said to me ‘I’m going to do thee, you diving whatever’. The half-time whistle went and the lad walked up to me and dropped his nut on me in front of the referee. He got sent off and I got a yellow card.
“It was quite tight Ossett’s tunnel and you had to walk past the away changing room. So at the end of the game I thought something wasn’t right and two kids blocked me going past their changing room and I looked behind and there were two others and they started on me, kicking seven bells out of me. Next thing I know Gaz Hamlet comes running over with a chair and starts hitting them. They then tried to get into our changing room and it was funny. Daz Utley kicked the door from our side and he got his foot stuck so he was on the floor and these lads from Salford were ragging the door open. Daz was moving all over the place. Through the crack in the door, Gaz is still hitting them with a chair. Next thing we know, there’s someone with a goalie glove going barmy punching them.
“It all calms down and Eric comes in. He was fuming and he was going berserk with us. He started laying into Benno (Neil Bennett) saying ‘thee causing all the trouble, throwing punches Benno, what are you doing’? Benno was like ‘it wasn’t me throwing punches’, but Eric insisted it was him saying ‘it wasn’t you, you’re only one with goalie gloves’. Eric hadn’t seen the whole incident, he only saw Benno throwing punches’.”
Duncan Bray on Goole’s 2007 ‘Pay to Play’ West Riding County Cup Final against Guiseley
“The final was a good night and I scored twice as we won 3-1. Mind you we were lucky to get in the ground because the West Riding officials wouldn’t let us in for half-an-hour as none of the squad had a ticket! I was one of the first ones off the bus and I walked to the gate with my kitbag and the steward went ‘tickets’. I said ‘I’m playing’. The steward replied ‘you still a ticket’. So when I said ‘I haven’t got one’, he said ‘well you can’t come in’. There were 15 of us so I pointed to them and said they didn’t have a ticket either and the steward was adamant, ‘they can’t come in either’. I told him he didn’t have a cup final if that was the case. He just went ‘no ticket, you can’t come in’. Des O’Hearne, the chairman, had been sent the tickets and he had given them to the supporters. We had to wait for him to arrive and agree to pay for our ‘tickets’ before we were allowed in.”
Danny Buttle on his reputation as a prank caller
“Me, Bows (Anthony Bowsley) and Jody Barford were in a car school when we were at Brigg and we used to prank a few managers. They all used to fall for it hook, line and sinker.
“The one we did on Leon Sewell was one of the best ones. He was manager of Westella and I pretended to be Mick Norbury in a thick Barnsley accent and I said I wanted to sign Chris Spinks. I started arguing with Leon because I said I was going to offer him loads of money and Leon said he wouldn’t leave. It started with:
‘Hi Leon, it’s Mick Norbury, alright duck’?
“The call ended with Leon saying:
‘I’ll ring you tomorrow Mick’
‘You better do’.
‘I will do’.
“I used do prank calls before nights out with Ash Allanson and Paul Fraser who used to play in goal for Selby Town. They wrote the scripts and I did the voice on the phone.
“We rang Mick Gray and I pretended to be the North Ferriby manager. Now bear in mind it was nine o’clock on a Saturday night and it was on a withheld number. I’m not sure the centre-back’s name, it could have been Steve Barrett?
‘Right I want to sign your centre-half Steve Barrett’
‘I don’t think he’ll leave’.
‘I’m going to offer him £80’
‘Right I’ll speak to him in a minute.
“So Mick rang Steve Barrett to tell him Ferriby were coming in for him and offered him an extra £20. Mick also rang Paul Fraser who had been sat at the side of me when I had made the phone call.
‘You’ll never guess what, the North Ferriby manager has just rang and wants to sign Steve Barrett’.
‘Really’?
‘Yeah, do you think he’ll go’?
‘Yeah’
‘I’ve just rang Steve and offered him £20 more quid’.
Steve Barrett then rang Paul Fraser the following day and said:
‘I can’t believe it, I’m going to go to the gym tomorrow and get myself fit for Ferriby’.
“It is brilliant banter that we got him a pay rise!
“We once got Mitch Cook when he was the Brid manager. I rang him for a friendly once as Mick Norbury and I gave him my mate’s number which he rang the next day. He’d pencilled it in as well.”
Craig Marsh on snitching Dave Watts up at Ossett Albion
“Dave Watts was a police officer and he must be high up now, I haven’t spoken to him in years. We went to Sheffield on a night out and about six of us stopped over. I was rooming with Gary Duffty and Dave Watts was rooming with someone else. The following morning me and Gary Duffty had to get back as we were playing Sunday morning football. We got up early and we went to see if the other lads were up? Watty also had to get back, but he wasn’t up. His hotel room door was ajar though! So I went in and took his bag of clothes. So he had to drive home with just his under-crackers on. He went absolutely barmy over it, but it was hilarious. He was fuming and he said ‘I had to go to work and I was late and I had no gear’.”
Chris Dolby on Pele meeting ‘Chris from Rotherham’
“My second season was when we played Inter Milan at Bramall Lane as part of the club’s 150th anniversary celebrations. I was in the line waiting to meet Pele who is the God of football. He’s coming down the line and there’s 20,000 fans at the ground. The place is buzzing. Marco Materazzi and Mario Balotelli are playing. At the time I still had my youthful looks and Pele had given me a kind of nod from distance to say I want to meet him. So he comes down and you could tell he was thrilled to meet me. So in broken English, he asks me where I’m from? He had been sizing me up for a while so he must have thought I was Portuguese or something. I have to say there was euphoria in my mind over the fact he stopped to speak to me. I was starstruck and all I could muster was ‘em, em, Rotherham’ in my Yorkshire twang. Pele looked totally confused and you could see his cogs working thinking ‘Rotherham, where’s that, that’s not a country’? He was a little baffled and he couldn’t get away quick enough.”